from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Of a grasping habit or disposition; given to seizing for plunder or the satisfaction of greed, or obtaining wrongfully or by extortion; predatory; extortionate: as, a rapacious usurer; specifically, of animals, subsisting by capture of living prey; raptorial; predaceous: as, rapacious birds or fishes.

Synonyms Rapacious, Ravenous, Voracious. Rapacious, literally disposed to seize, may note, as the others do not, a distinctive characteristic of certain classes of animals; the tiger is a rapacious animal, but often not ravenous or voracious. Ravenous implies hunger of an extreme sort, shown in eagerness to eat. Voracious means that one eats or is disposed to eat a great deal, without reference to the degree of hunger: a glutton is voracious. Samuel Johnson tended to be a voracious eater, because in his early life he had often gone hungry till be was ravenous.

They don't like the public being reminded that it was GOP stalwart Phil Graham's crusade for the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act, that was put in place after the Great Depression to protect the financial system from this kind of rapacious Republicanism, that was, in large part, the hole in the greed dam that put the economy where it is today.

He denounces "rapacious usury," and says that it was "more than once condemned by the Church," conveniently overlooking the fact that the _usuria_, which was condemned, was not only "rapacious" but was all taking of money for the use of money, all interest on loans -- a condemnation which, if insisted upon by the Church to-day, would soon empty her sanctuaries.